Forgot about this thread, so I went back and looked to see what I posted about 20/20 early on, and it was mostly fairly positive stuff, or at least interested. Actually, a lot of the early posts were positive. It's strange to me that the game seems to have picked up so much in popularity after early skepticism in England, while in some other parts of the world it's been more or less the opposite.

I figure with the way Asian cricket tends to revolve around playing lots of ODIs that 20/20 internationally is likely to take off. I feel a lot of the reservations are from people who've not seen or played it and once they experience it they'll see how quality cricket tends to win through and it's not a case of sloggers and dibbly-dob bowlers doing well (ignoring Adam Hollioake who did well except for the latter stages - the guys who've gotten centuries in English twenty20 have all been internationals except for Ian Thomas I think). As for the argument against it being 'why not just play an ODI instead', 20 over cricket is much better to fit in on after work hours on weekdays like with football and it does away with most of the dull plodding bits in 50 over games.

I also think Australia will annoyingly be the best at it when it does take off properly because it does involve a lot of mental-strength when games inevitably get close and it does rely on fielding more than 50 over games.

My opening post over 8 years ago. Quite happy the only bit I got wrong was Australia being the best at it...

I'm actually quite interested to see how people's now well-formed ideas this format change when more high profile games start being played in different conditions. The 2012, 2014 and 2016 World T20 Championships are all in the subcontinent and the one prior to that was in the West Indies, which rolls out very subcontinent-like conditions these days. The first two tournaments were in South Africa and England but the game was very different in 2007.

I'm pretty interested in finding out how much the dominance of players like Mendis is Narine is down to the fact that those bowlers are well-suited to T20 and how much has been down to the conditions, because to me it's clearly a bit of both. Obviously spin is a big weapon in T20 cricket and "mystery spin" if you like has been the driving force behind that, but I have my doubts it'd work at the highest level in Australia for example so I think it's been exaggerated a bit by the location of these games.

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A lot of the domination of mystery spin is the need for premeditation in t20 and the obsession with mystery spin is to the detriment to these bowlers in the longest format because they're wanting variations and practising them rather than perfecting stock deliveries so much.

A lot of the domination of mystery spin is the need for premeditation in t20 and the obsession with mystery spin is to the detriment to these bowlers in the longest format because they're wanting variations and practising them rather than perfecting stock deliveries so much.

I think mystery spin would do reasonably well in Test cricket if it was delivered nicely. For me they've not made the adjustments in length - particularly Sunil Narine. He bowls far too short. The stock length in T20 for spinners has to be back of a length, but in Test cricket it needs to be full to commit the batsman to shots that bring the spinner's skill into play.

In T20 the batsmen are mostly going to come after you. If it's full it's a lot easier to successfully attack - but it can also get you out. But in a T20 game the risk-reward is much more in the batsman's favour with the necessity to score quickly. Also the field in T20 isn't set for edges, so unless the batsman gets some decent bat on it or it's an lbw/bowled/stumping then it removes a lot of the potential reward for defeating the batsman - as well of course that wickets mean less.

If a spinner bowls it a little flatter and back of a length it's harder to lever the ball over the boundary fielders - only a select few batsmen can do this consistently, guys like Gayle and KP can go on the backfoot and still consistently hit it 70-80m. The vast majority of batsmen will be limited to cut shots and trying to hit small gaps. If they misread the spin then they won't hit the gaps, or indeed the ball - because they're not really waiting to see it turn off the pitch and then guide it through a gap - they're lining up where they think the ball will be and hitting at it.